Refractions

When I was younger, Dad always drove us around in the Coupe. Whether we were running errands or retreating to safety from Mom’s drunken escapades, Dad’s vehicle of choice was the Coupe. It took us forever to get anywhere in that car, though—it attracted all kinds of people, oftentimes igniting long conversations with strangers in the parking lot of Market Basket. Honestly, I think that’s why Dad drove it all the time: so he didn’t have to spend so much time at home.

Tonight I bent over a page and considered my life. Like straggling to Sutter’s Mill in 1851, too late for fortune, the pan sloshed full of rocks: nothing left, river tapped.

I spend my days in the words of others but I’d never bothered thinking of life as a story. It was virgin territory, which is strange because I lived it. So, I held the pen, but memory is a stubborn child.

The office is monochrome, but, like a plate of matching food, the effect is illusory. Mustard upholstery makes gray tiles feel yellow the way that rice on my plate is yellow beside corn. The windows are smudged and dusted. The ceiling fan doesn’t chop a breeze. Fluorescent lights hum just above the threshold at which I’d ignore them. The room wipes your mind when you enter, and I sit at the computer, open ad-copy, remove errors and excesses –waking sleep until lunch.

A cotton butterfly adorned her black, leather handbag. She was reading Santos Evangelícos.Maybe butterflies ascend in her mind, lifted by Christ's wonders? I wondered.She closed the book, elbow on the butterfly, head in her right hand.A bent-spined nun had entered our Metro carriage, holding a walking stick, the nun's bonnet's white edge like a priest's collar. ​

“I’m on break,” I state, my voice monotone and a bit sharp. Talking to him about school or work makes him feel bad.“Oh,” he responds, dead air filling the space between us before he finally settles back into the couch.

I’m mad at him but honestly, he hasn’t done anything to deserve it. Not that I can remember. I’m just angry. The emotion feels strange next to the smell of Christmas pine and mess of storage boxes my brother drops at my feet. They’re full of lights, ornaments and childhood crafts.

The apartment is ill-lit and small, each room obstructively uncomfortable with its purpose and position. The refrigerator is partway in the dining room. The bathroom shares laundry and rust linoleum duty. The front door is so close to the living room’s sliding glass door, I can envision delivery people standing in confusion as to which is the main entrance and which is the most deteriorated. It’s the kind of place in which people who aren’t bothered by white walls, flattened carpet, and one tiny bedroom subsist. Poorly. Thank god he’s hot and horny, which is all that matters. I’m not looking to move in, at least not my possessions.

Phil Patterson had reached that point in his life: He was 73, had been divorced for twenty-four years, was estranged from his two children and, last week, his dog had died. He had physical issues as well: Walking had become a chore, even with bifocals his vision was terrible; so were his teeth, to the point where eating was more pain than pleasure. The few friends he had were distant and his diminishing eyesight left him unable to drive except to buy food — mostly soup — and necessities. He was, thus, a prisoner in the empty fifty-year-old house on which there remained forty thousand dollars due on the mortgage.

I think a better question is “Why are people religious?” Honestly. Think about that question for a while, whether you are religious or not.

Is it because people believe there is a savior who died for our sins? Is it because people believe there is some otherworldly place our souls transcend (or descend) to after death? Is it because people WANT to believe these things, because imagining an eternity of nothingness and non-existence is terrifying? Is it simply because people were raised in a certain belief system by their parents and thousands of generations before them did the same that this is now something indisputable in their minds? Or even if they question their religion, they’d rather accept it than try to rationalize or dispute it?